It is said that English speakers fall into three groups: those that have learnt it as a mother tongue, those that have learnt it as a second language through exposure in a society where it is spoken, and those that are forced to use it for administrative, professional or educational purposes.
This third group, along with the supremacy of English over German in the business world, has created a boom in institutions offering English for Business. However, the average business person, while happily accepting the challenge, does not have any idea how long the process may take. Duncan Ford, a specialist in language teaching theory, partly puts the blame on misleading publicity and says that you have to think in terms of hundreds of hours while people still think learning a language is a three-hour-a-week job.
According to him, the key is lots of variety of the activities and adapting to the dynamics of the class. The communicative approach has replaced the old-fashioned note-taking method and for those who think that a couple of hours with their latest CD-ROM is a substitute for English classes, they should think again. While seen as a useful back-up, they are no teacher replacement.
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